1955

"Welcome to Antebellum," the ghoul said. "You are the guest of honor." Things are not right in 1955 Raleigh, North Carolina, and it will be up to Jazz Jones to get to the bottom of the murk and clear things up.

"You heard about the dead boy?" She had said that her name was January Queen and that she was with the NAACP. Her eyes were a pair of sins, or maybe they just mirrored my own.

"Maybe we came to you," she said, "because not only are you fair, but you have a firm grasp on what the word justice really means."

And there it was, I thought. I was being asked to bring the killers to justice and expose the underbelly of seething hatred in my city, even if it meant offending my neighbors and inflaming the ire of otherwise good white folks who just didn't know any better. And, possibly, break the law along the way. Whatever it took. Even if I had to dig some six-foot-deep holes along the way.